Striving for a better indigenous future

The sight of Prime Minister
Julia Gillard
and Opposition Leader
Tony Abbott
being trapped in a restaurant by violent demonstrators and then hustled away by their security people was not the image of Australia Day that most Australians would want to see.

But the incident sends an important message about the state of indigenous affairs. This message is not the old one about confrontation or protest, but one where the bulk of the indigenous leadership condemned or distanced themselves from the violent protesters. As such the incident marks an important shift in the attitudes of indigenous people.

The stupidity of the Australia Day action was also highlighted by the fact that the remarks by Mr Abbott, which supposedly sparked the incident, were broadly right.

All that he really said was that a lot had changed since the Aboriginal Embassy was set up in 1972, and that it was time to move on. Certainly problems remain in the indigenous community and indigenous people may be angry about those problems, but the embassy was something that happened back in the 1970s. Since then there has been Mabo, both land rights and native title legislation, an apology, and even a general recognition by indigenous leaders that at least a part of the answer to their problems has to come from the indigenous people themselves.

The Aboriginal rights campaigns of the 1960s and 1970s achieved important things, but also set the cause back by having indigenous people embracing a welfare culture. That culture undermined the social structures, work incentives and self-reliance which are all hallmarks of traditional indigenous culture.

There is also a general recognition that we have built an economically successful, diverse society with a relaxed lifestyle, in which indigenous people want to take part. It is a society which remains tolerant, despite efforts by activists to find offence when a politician makes a sensible remark.

Despite the incident on Australia Day, this society remains untroubled by the major and often violent divisions of race, class and even religion evident in other countries.

Part of the reason for that lack of divisions is our comparative economic success, which we want to build upon.

Related Quotes

Company Profile

Indigenous people also clearly want to be a part of that economic success story and it is only a fringe group, egged on by certain non-indigenous activists, that wants to keep them downtrodden.

As we report today, a part of that economic success story which directly affects remote indigenous communities is occurring in mining areas, with mining companies and ancillary services employing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in larger numbers than ever before.

One aspect of the ongoing debate about integrating indigenous people into general society which may have been threatened by the events of Australia Day is the push to give them some form of recognition in the constitution.

Australia wants an inclusive society in which different groups can be recognised as different without the need to give them separate legal rights, including what amounts to an indigenous bill of rights in the recent proposals.

Apart from other difficulties, courts interpreting the legislation would have to rule on who counted as belonging to the special group with additional legal rights and who did not.

But indigenous people are only one part of a diverse population that is growing larger and more diverse through immigration. Again, despite the efforts of activists to portray our society as xenophobic, this financial year we expect to welcome another 185,000 people to our shores, or a little less than 1 per cent of our present population.

Although many of those immigrants are from the traditional source countries of the UK, Ireland and New Zealand, growing numbers are from China, India and the Philippines. Those communities will soon far outnumber indigenous people, if they do not already, and will take their place within the broader Australian community, as all groups should.

It says a great deal for Australia’s success in building a diverse, tolerant, economically successful society with a relaxed lifestyle that we welcome people from so many backgrounds with apparently little trouble, or even much comment.

Indigenous people have proved difficult to integrate, but the good news is that, despite shocking evidence of social dysfunction, indigenous employment is booming, thanks to the strong mining sector.

As a result, and despite the best efforts of green activists to paint a different picture, Aboriginal communities are being more welcoming of mining, even uranium mining.

Indigenous people, like the groups that are coming to Australia, just want better lives for themselves and their children, which includes safe and thriving communities and well-paying jobs.

The actions of a tiny minority on Australia Day should not detract attention from that basic message, or the progress we have made.